What I Miss

When I was working I had some negative feelings towards stay-at-home moms. Like, who do they think they are thinking life is hard? They get to stay home. All day. With their kids! Whenever I saw a stay-at-home mom at the store when I had a weekday off or happened to stop in and grab some lunch before court I would glare at their backs as they wandered happily around the store with kids in tow.

Uh, yeah.

Can I get a reality check for the Ignorant one on aisle 2?

Now I realize that that mother I glared at in the grocery store could have been so close to ripping her hair out that her only escape was to find something she "needed" at the store so she could get out of the house for a minute.

So I suppose at this point it looks like this post is going to be filed under "the grass is always greener" heading. Well, in a way. But mostly it is to help me remember the things that I miss, and some of the things I don't, about being on the other side of that "fence".

I do miss getting ready for the day before 7 a.m. Granted, I usually walked in the door to work about 7:08 every morning, but I was showered and dressed.

I don't miss leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. and not getting back home until 6:30 p.m.

I do miss talking to more than 4 people on any given day.

I don't miss ALL of the people I talked to.

I do miss sneaking out the back door with a couple of the agents to go on a Dairy Queen run and then hurrying to eat it by the time we got back to the office. I think everyone else knew I went, but I still thought I was being sneaky.

I don't miss out on taking Logan for ice cream because he told me my hair looked nice.

I do miss the passive-agressive office fights I would have with coworkers, particularly the oldest agent in the office - he once told another agent that he got my panties in a knot. I still laugh about that one.

I don't miss the adorable things my kids do on a daily basis that keep me laughing just as hard or harder.

I do miss chatting with my boss or sitting out front with the girls in the office and gossiping.

I don't miss the feeling of dread when Logan got sick and I knew I had to make the decision about whether to call my boss AGAIN and hope she believed me that he was sick again. (She always did and he always was.)

I don't miss obnoxious coworkers who always seemed to be trying to get me in trouble.

I don't miss sitting in staff meetings that got turned into a finger-pointing game so awkward and uncomfortable that no one's eyes left the floor.

However, I do miss staff meetings where we spent the entire time, sometimes pretty unsuccessfully, to stifle our laughs. And Agent P. always kicking off my flipflop whenever I sat next to him.

I don't miss having to leave my kids at the babysitters. Especially on the days he would cry and scream as I shut the door so I wouldn't be late.

I do miss feeling important. It's hard to feel important when you don't shower until 10 a.m.

I don't miss the looked-down-on look I got from people who thought it was horrible that I worked outside the home. True though that I probably got the look because they caught on to the vibes I was sending their way.

I don't miss the guilt. Oh, the guilt. Ask any working mom and she can tell you about the guilt.

I do miss getting to be someone other than "mom" at times.

I don't miss out on this part of these little lives that I will never, ever get back.

No matter how hard it gets, no matter how many moments in the last 6 months I would have given anything to snap my fingers and be back in my quiet office where I was in control and felt valuable, that last sentence says it all. I may not be a perfect mom, I may not have been "that girl" who was born to be a mom, but looking back from 6 months there is not a day I would give back or trade. I'm only glad that I have this perspective - to be able to say that I have been both places and this is where I need to be. I am thankful for the job I did have - a job that I liked so well that I do miss it. I was lucky for that. But, we have made sacrifices in the home we choose to live in, the things we choose to buy, and the way we choose to live so that I can be here, now, and I feel lucky for that.

And I'm especially grateful to Dave - who has made the most sacrifices of all of us only to get to listen to me whine about staying home on the days that don't go so well. At least I won't be looking back on this time when the kids have grown up and whining about what I missed...